Springfield daily republic. [volume] (Springfield, O. [Ohio]) 1887-1888, 1887-09-17

Of the crop. One
man ought to get SENATOR PUGH.
living for himself and his hands from forty
acres of land and raise at the same time ten
bales of cotton. You rent him these forty
acres for perhaps one-third Of the crop, and
You rem. him at the same time a mule. Your
share Of the crop sAould be three bales, which
will amount to PEI baps the value OF sl00.
The land. we will say, is worth $3.50. Your
mule has cost you Sl25, and your total ip-
vestmen, for this land has been, We will say.
$iOO. Out OF this you have gotten 500,
which is a very fair percentage
You were in congress before the war. were
you not, senatDrF
Yes was elected to the United States
congress i'll 1859"
The subject Of Cahoun's monument here
came up, and asked Senator Pugh if he had
ever seen Calhoun. He replied:
No; l visited Washington in 1850. when
the departments were draped in mourning
for Calhouns death. He was. in my mind.
the greatest logician this country has ever
had His great intellect was improved by
continuous hard stuGy. and be had the strong
est of convictions. He was not a man Of
feelings and of passions, as were Webster and
Clay, but one of cold, pure intellect.
Il saw both Clay and Webster during that
visit" Senator Pugh went on. but Clay was
failing AMI lacked the fire Of his early days.
l heard him speak in the senate. But he
failed to command the attention that l
thought he should have, and he was not As
eloquen, as when l heard him some years be-
fore at Meridian, Miss. Webster, however,
still held all of his power. heard him in a
debate with Dayton. OF New Jersey. Dayton
made the frs. speech, and in it he reviewed
Webster's record on the subject under discus
sion He made a powerful speech, and to my
mind he left Webster very little ground to
stand upon. l did not see how Webster could
reply TO him, and watched him anXiously.
He rose very coolly. began calmly and tore
Dayton's speech to bits. took it up pecemeal,
and demolished the whole structure. He
practically annhilated him, and with the
greatest ease. II was a masterpiece"
Senator PuSh was member Of congress at
the time the war broke out He was after
wards a member of the Confederate congress
and he served throughout the war upon the
military commit ee. He held one Of the
most Important positions in the congress at
Richmond. asked him whether he thought
Davis had any idea of making himself die
tator He replied:
NO. he did not No man can be dictator in
this country, and Davis knew that very well.
Our people will not tolerate king or AL
emperor over them, and the moment a man
attempts to make himself such he will he cut
of think it was a mistake. however, that
the Confederacy chose . military man AS
president Davis was a graduate OF West
Point. He had served in the Mexican war.
and he had been secretary of war under
Pierce He wanted to command armies and
direct the military movements, whereas it
would have been better il We had had presi-
dent who would have dev oted himself entirely
TO his executive duties. Had We had a business
man at our head we would not have lacked
resources Howell Cobb, for instance, would
have hypothecated the cotton at the start,
and we would have plenty of money TO have
carried on the war
knowing as You do now, senator, what the
people Of the north were at the time the war
began; knowing what their resources were
then, and the patriotism by which they were
animated. do you think the south ever had
any chance Of successf
Yes, l think it had once. This was at
Shiloh. II We had known then what we do
now We could have annihilated Grants army.
Had we done so our troops would have pushed
on into winter quarters upon the ONO river.
THIS would have given to the south Missouri,
Kentucky and Tennessee, and with the pro-
visions aud men which We would have gotten
from them think We would have been sue
ce~sful At the beginning Of the war our
men were better disciplined and better men
than those Of the north. Our army was then
made up Of the flower OF the south, and We
had more trained men among us than the
north had. / think. had succeeded at
Shiloh, We could have brought the north to
terms"
But in that case would the Confederate
government Ia sc been a successF
"No, think not. The feeling among the
people of the south WAS such that they would
not have consented to permanent separa-
tion. They would have come together OH
some terms within q year, and the old nation
would have gone Oh. The politicians could
not have kept the two sections apart. Be
sides the Confederate government was con-
trsry to human civilization. 1t was contrary
to the advanced public opinion OF the world
at the time. In my mind it was bound to go
under We wanted TO force slavery into
territory where nature had never intended it
should go, and we based our struggle upon
the ground Of its extension. We had been
sgitaiing the subject for a generation, and
We had come To believe so firmly that We
were right that nothing but a war could have
changed us. l believe now that the fight
was inevitable. and do not think that sla-
very could have been abolished in any other
way. The war was a cruel one. but 1t il bet
ter now that it has occvsrd. and think
that the south and the NORTH could never have
been permanently united in any other way.
Any compromise might have made would
have been only temporary and would have
created a running sore within the two sec
tions IL had 20 be u fight to death ami to
exhaustion. No other way would have set
tied it"
here asked as to reconstruction, and Sem
ator Fugh replied
"The policy of reconstruction was all
wrong, and 1t WAS this policy which has made
the unpleasant feeling which has existed he
tween the north and the south since the war
1t was the fight between Johnson and
congress that made the bloody chasm.
johnson laid out one scheme Of recon
struction and began to carry this ,"s-
effect. thu 1l.-mate end being his o.r